ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the 1950s as the time when most of the women were in employment. It looks at women's workplace cultures – broadly defined as 'a way of life, a set of shared meanings with specific symbols' – in the context of the Rowntree firm, particularly with regard to relationships between women. The chapter draws on 13 oral history interviews conducted with women who worked at the factory between 1936 and 1989. It considers how York women's experiences contribute to broader historical understandings of workplace cultures. Workplace cultures do not exist in isolation from cultures outside the factory. Women's actions in the capitalist workplace were culturally embedded in terms of class, regional and ethnic identity as well as in the culture and structures of patriarchy (such as heterosexual marriage and unequal pay). Feminist analyses of women's employment in factories have realised the vital importance of shopfloor culture in women's working lives.
